NotMyNameActually

Hi Harold! Lost was one of my favorite shows of all time, but you were also great on my favorite "cancelled before it's time" show, The Unusuals. You showed a real gift for comedic acting on that show, so I was wondering if you foresee or plan a return to comedy in your career in the future?

I'm about to go back to work in a couple of weeks, teaching assistant in 3rd grade at a private school.

Being a private school, we have options and resources many public schools don't. Everyone has to wear a mask when we're indoors. They've added additional hand-washing stations and hand sanitizer dispensers in the classroom, and our routines will include frequent hand-washing. Everyone has to answer health screening questions before being allowed on campus. They have put better filters in the AC. Each classroom has a HEPA filter air purifier. The kids + teacher will be in a pod, not mixing with other students. Within your pod, you can be closer than 6 feet, otherwise no one can be closer than 6 feet for more than 15 minutes. Our class sizes are small, less than 20 students, and about a 1/3 are opting to do school from home. We can't control what our families do on their own time, but we are encouraging them to stay safe and avoid crowds, and wear masks in public. If anyone is suspected or confirmed having Covid, they do contact tracing and quarantine anyone they've been in close contact with from school.

Now, the downside. My state is one of the top ones for number of Covid cases (though the specific county my school is in has leveled off and is dropping, but slowly). I also personally have several health conditions putting me at greater risk of having a serious case if I do catch Covid-19, and so do the people I live with.

They've decided they're ok with me going back, if I come home from work, enter through my basement living space and take a shower and change before I come up, and of course stay isolated at home if I do get sick.

I have to go back. They won't let us work from home anymore. I can't afford to not have a job, and anything else I could possibly get would be even higher risk, working in a store or something I guess, maybe, if anyone is even hiring.

Is there anything more my school should be doing, or I should be doing, to protect myself and my family? What are the chances I'm going to get it, and get a bad case? Like, is it time to come to peace with the fact I'm going to die, and soon? Thank you!

There’s such an emphasis on the importance of in-person learning that people have lost sight of the fact that safe in-person learning under these circumstances provides little to none of the benefits of traditional learning, at least for older kids.

Don't get it twisted. The majority of people pushing for in-person school don't give a shit about how well the kids are learning, they just want the free babysitters so people can go back to work.

We're calling it "pods" at the private school where I work. No more mixing classes during recess or lunch, no more use of common areas like the library or maker space. Teachers don't mix either. The teacher's lounge is being turned into another classroom, and we will take our lunch breaks either outside, or socially distanced using what used to be cooperative work spaces at the ends of the hallways, but we have to stay on our own floor.

So many teachers feel like they cannot do their job without a whiteboard.

Zoom even has a built-in whiteboard tool, ffs!

I'm nowhere near the youngest teacher at my school, and I'm no technological genius (fuck SmartBoards, the "interactive" tools never work consistently and there's no evidence that kids learn better from moving digital shapes on a screen rather than physical manipulatives on a table anyway) but y'all, there is so much you can do teaching virtually, and so much you can do with technology in general, and it just astonishes me how many teachers refuse to learn these tools.